The 4 Biggest Myths the Media Needs to Stop Telling About Bernie Sanders

The appeal of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is as unique as his unlikely rise to national prominence. The Internet adores him. He has become the pied piper of American liberals, and emerged as the most formidable Democratic primary challenger to Hillary Clinton. His supporters have filled town halls and recreational centers from New Hampshire to Iowa and Minnesota. And they have opened their wallets, delivering the campaign $6 million in small donations.

Still, the national press is skeptical. Clinton's lead in the polls is, by many accounts, "insurmountable." Her fundraising machine has made victory a foregone conclusion. While not a single vote will be cast for another seven months, large swaths of the mainstream media have resolved to treat the Democratic contest like no contest at all. Sanders seems to matter only insofar as he might "push [Clinton] in a more progressive direction."

These are not unreasonable opinions nor unimportant questions — Sanders still trails in the polls and lags far behind Clinton in the money race. But if most of the media isn't taking his candidacy seriously, the senator and his supporters certainly are. As he said Thursday morning, "This is not a protest campaign." Sanders wants to win. His campaign bristles at the suggestion they are working for anything less.

So, with the presidential race still in its very early stages, here are the four myths about Sanders we should dispel right now:

1. He can't compete with Clinton.The suggestion Sanders might be able to seriously challenge Clinton is treated withdisdainby the conventional chroniclers of the campaign. Almost every story about Sanders includes the caveat he's a "long shot" candidate. We are constantly reminded ofall the reasonsSanders can't win. Most of the press has chalked up his candidacy as a tactical play to pull Clinton to the left on economic policies, the implication being Sanders will inevitably succumb to the might of the Clinton machine.

But the enthusiasm for the insurgent is real, and his policies appeal to a wide swath of the Democratic primary electorate. His office seems to cook up a compelling policy proposal or bill with impressive regularity. He's been attracting huge crowds in Iowa. His poll numbers have climbed consistently in New Hampshire since he entered the race, and on Saturday, Sanders guaranteed an enthusiastic overflow crowd he would win the state.

If anyone knows how easily an overwhelming lead in the early polls can disappear, it's Clinton. In 2007, Clinton maintained a huge lead in national polls before being defeated by Barack Obama in the Iowa caucuses, marking the beginning of the end for her candidacy. They remember, and they are taking Sanders seriously. To win the Democratic primary and enter the general election with an energetic party base, Clinton will have to appeal to the same voters rallying for Sanders. It's not an accident Clinton has, on a number of occasions, followed her rival's lead in announcing or floating her positions on an array of hot-button policy issues.

2. His policies are irresponsible and un-American.

"I can hear the Republican attack ad right now," George Stephanopoulos, host of the ABC News Sunday morning show This Week said to Sanders in May. "'He wants America to look more like Scandinavia.'""What's wrong with that?" Sanders responded, in his inimitable style. But Stephanopoulos wasn't incorrect: It's become a trope of national politics that ideas originating in Europe are by their nature contrary to some imaginary ideal of American-ness. Sanders' embrace of the term "democratic socialist," which critics have use to suggest he advocates some sort of Soviet-style economic system, only feeds the beast.But even a half-serious reader of Sanders' policies will find they fit squarely within the American liberal tradition.

Consider his position on tax rates for the wealthy. In an interview with CNBC, host John Harwood asked if Sanders would consider imposing top marginal tax rate of 90% on the wealthiest Americans. Sanders didn't rule it out. On Thursday, he was more specific, saying on Charlie Rose that he was preparing to unveil a "comprehensive tax package, which I suspect will, for the top marginal rates, go over 50%."

How crazy is that? Between 1951 and 1962, a period of historic economic growth overseen by the administrations of Harry Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy, the top marginal rate was steady at 91%. Today, it's 39.6%:

A spike? Sure. Some fundamental reimagining of the American social contract? Not even close.

3. He is too old.

Sanders is 73 years old. His age is mentioned inthe firstfew sentences of most stories about him, and sometimes used as a sneaky way of suggesting he would be unable to connect to young voters.

But the age question is among the least compelling and most obnoxiously overplayed. Ronald Reagan was 69years old when was elected in 1980 and left office just shy of 78. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was 72 years old when he accepted the Republican nomination in 2008.

Sanders will be 75 years old when the next president is inaugurated Jan. 20, 2017. He's hardly lacking energy — he keeps a relentless schedule in Washington and on the campaign trail. His speeches are so energetic that one of Sanders' top campaign advisers recently told Mic his staff is working on getting the candidate to attack the microphone with a bit less gusto.

His age doesn't seem to be off-putting to younger Democrats, either. On a number of different issues, polling shows that young voters are receptive to Sanders' policy positions. While Sanders is undoubtedly further to the left than many Democrats, his core rationale for running — addressing economic inequality — is hardly a fringe issue, and one that concerns many young people. A recent Gallup poll found that "63% of Americans say money and wealth distribution is unfair."

4. He's a radical who can't govern or compromise.

Sanders has enjoyed a loud but largely unproductive career in the Senate, sponsoring or cosponsoring 93 bills, none of which became law. He is known more for his advocacy on issues he deems important than effectively passing legislation. How, then, could he govern as president? How could this firebrand liberal find common cause with conservative opponents?

Consider this: Sanders spent eight years as the mayor of Burlington, Vermont, the state's largest city. His tenure involved running and goosing the development of its largest municipal center, and balancing a range of political and economic interests.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) speaks at his first campaign rally, in Burlington, Vt., on May 26.Source: Andy Duback/AP

In a recent article for the Nation, Peter Dreier and Pierre Clavel, a pair of political academics, explore Sanders' tenure as mayor. They quote at some length a local businessman named Tony Pomerleau, who was planning to buy up disused property on the shores of Lake Champlain, on the city's western border, to build "a mega-project that included a 150-room hotel, retail space, a 100-slip marina and 240 condominiums in 18-story buildings."

Sanders was elected before the project began, and quickly scuttled Pomerlau's plans. Over time, they made peace and formed a lasting political alliance that belies the prevailing class warrior myths that follow Sanders' campaign.

"Bernie and I worked very well together for the betterment of the town," Pomerleau told the Nation. "We were the odd couple."

Sanders may have the look of an odd duck, but whatever colors the coming year of campaign rallies and political jousting, the professionals dedicated to covering every twist and turn owe the public more considered analysis and fewer of the familiar, lazy aphorisms. With so much time before the voting begins, they will have every opportunity.

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HERE IS THE reality of the American economy. Despite an explosion in technology and a huge increase in worker productivity, the middle class continues its 40-year decline. Today, millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages and median family income is almost $5,000 less than it was in 1999.

Meanwhile, the wealthiest people and the largest corporations are doing phenomenally well. Today, 99 percent of all new income is going to the top 1 percent, while the top one-tenth of 1 percent own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. In the last two years, the wealthiest 14 people in this country increased their wealth by $157 billion. That increase is more than is owned by the bottom 130 million Americans – combined.

Over the last 40 years, the largest corporations in this country have closed thousands of factories in the United States and outsourced millions of American jobs to low-wage countries overseas. That is why we need a new trade policy and why I am opposed to the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership now before Congress.

Large corporations and their lobbyists have created loopholes enabling corporations to avoid an estimated $100 billion a year in taxes by shifting profits to the Cayman Islands and other offshore tax havens. That is why we need real tax reform which demands that the very wealthy and large corporations start paying their fair share of taxes.

Corporate America has mounted vigorous anti-union campaigns, making it harder for workers to collectively bargain for decent wages and benefits. That is why we must make certain that workers are given a fair chance to join a union.

Meanwhile, US companies are buying back billions of dollars of their own stock in a way that manipulates stock prices, hurts the economy and, by the way, used to be against the law.

Instead of putting resources into innovative ways to build their businesses or hire new employees, corporations are pumping their record-breaking profits into buying back their own stock and increasing dividends to benefit their executives and wealthy shareholders at the expense of their workers. It is a major reason why CEOs are now making nearly 300 times what the typical worker makes. We must demand an end to stock buybacks.

We also must do a lot more to rebuild the middle class, check corporate greed, and make our economy work again for working families.

We need to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour over the next several years. With 70 percent of the economy dependent on consumers buying goods and services, the best way to expand the economy is to raise wages and create good jobs to increase the purchasing power of the American people.

We need to pass pay equity for women workers. It is not acceptable that women receive 78 cents on the dollar compared to male workers doing the same job.

We need to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour over the next several years. With 70 percent of the economy dependent on consumers buying goods and services, the best way to expand the economy is to raise wages and create good jobs to increase the purchasing power of the American people.

We need to pass pay equity for women workers. It is not acceptable that women receive 78 cents on the dollar compared to male workers doing the same job.

We need to make certain that every worker in this country receives guaranteed paid sick leave and vacation time.

We need to encourage business models that provide employees the tools to purchase their own businesses through Employee Stock Ownership Plans and worker-owned cooperatives. Workers at employer-owned companies are more motivated, productive, and satisfied with their jobs.

It is time to say loudly and clearly that corporate greed and the war against the American middle class must end. Enough is enough!

Bernie Sanders is a senator from Vermont and a candidate for the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

Social media has become a toxic place where the loudest and vilest rule. That’s not what the Internet was supposed to be.

On Wednesday, the Internet community site Reddit shut down a burgeoning group with the common, explicit goal of hating fat people.

The section, called /r/FatPeopleHate, consisted mostly of screenshots of subscribers’ overweight Facebook friends, their names blurred out but their faces visible, often lamenting that they couldn’t lose weight.

The value added to the world by this community was, of course, nonexistent. Two of the subreddit’s five rules, after all, were “no dissent/no being fat” and “absolutely NO FAT SYMPATHY.”

But by 2 p.m. on Thursday, one day after the company announced the changes, 15 of the top 25 posts on all of Reddit either poked fun at overweight people, served as backhanded PSAs for the side effects of obesity—like a picture of the extracted heart of an obese person—or called for Ellen Pao, Reddit’s CEO, to step down.

The 24th most popular post on the entire site was called “Found Ellen Pao’s Family Crest.” The post linked to a picture of a swastika.[150613-reddit-day-after-embed]

Reddit, remember, is the 10th most visited website in the United States and 30th in the world. This is not a blip or a trend. This is what the Internet is. The web is an economy of its own that now runs on collective shaming and fear under the fake auspices of free speech, self-expression, and the collective good.

People in Blue States seek psychiatric help 50% more often than in Red States

People who live in liberal states search for psychologists on Google 50% more, per capita, than people from conservative states. Vermont has the most searchers for mental health help, at 74% greater than the national average, which makes sense, since it is a far-left state with a socialist Senator, Bernie Sanders, who likes to talk about the joys of rape. People in liberal Massachusetts and far-left New York search 55% and 56% more often for therapists as well (California, which you would expect to be worst of all, is "only" 41% above average). By contrast, in Idaho, (adjusted for population size), people search 51% less often for therapists, 34% less often in Wyoming, and 29% less in Oklahoma. There is also an astonishing 76% more therapists per capita in Blue States.CONTINUE READING................

June 15, 2015Magna Carta and the Law that Governs GovernmentBy Mark J. Fitzgibbons

It was a time of abuse of power by the state, high taxes, foreign wars against aggressive, violent Muslims, cronyism, and unrest over civil, commercial and religious rights. Certain similarities between 1215 England and 2015 America are, as our British cousins might say, “delicious.”

Magna Carta is celebrated on June 15, 800 years after its first rendition was forced upon King John at Runnymede. It was John’s brother Richard the Lionheart who raised taxes to pay for the wars. Richard’s brother-successor King John ruled with arrogance, and never achieved the popularity of his brother..................

One byproduct of the Rachel Dolezal/Mother Africa uproar has been a revival of the old slur that Idaho is a “racist state”, a welcoming and nurturing environment for neo-Nazis, skinheads, and Klansmen.

Dolezal herself was raised in the area, and her parents, who exposed her imposture late last week, still reside there, which has led many commentators – among them Dr. Marcia Dawkins, in this rather overexcited interview with the BBC -- to repeat the “Fourth Reich” slander.

We all know where this comes from. In the late 1970s, Richard Butler, a retired aeronautics engineer with delusions of Führerhood, set up the headquarters of the “Aryan Nations” at Hayden Lake, a posh suburb of Coeur d’Alene. Evidently, this was supposed to serve as a focal point for neo-Nazi efforts across the country.

Needless to say, once the HQ was established, the locals immediately donned their white sheets, grabbed their wooden crosses, and headed for the colored part of town.

Actually… no. What they did was shun Butler and the members of his movement. Nobody would serve them, nobody would sell them goods, nobody would provide any services. The “Aryans” had to make a several-hour drive to Montana to purchase so much as a cracker.

Idahoans also established pressure groups, including the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations, to harry the Nazis. Spokesman Tony Stewart described to the LA Times how the Task Force would answer every attempt at a march or gathering by the Nazis with a fundraising effort for civil rights purposes in which money would be raised for every minute the event continued. The harder the Nazis tried, the more money would be raised to oppose them.

Not that the Aryan Nation events were anything like the Nuremberg rallies, if this photo is any indication: good photo here

The end came for Butler’s gimcrack empire in 1998, when two of his “guards” shot up a backfiring car passing his Führerbunker. A local jury awarded the victims $6.3 million, bankrupting Butler and wrecking his plans for a new Reich.

The neo-Nazis departed for Montana, where the FBI and local law-enforcement badgered them to near-extinction. Butler died broke and miserable in 2004.

Northern Idaho’s response to the Aryan invasion can serve as a sterling example of how responsible, legal countermeasures can defang such extremists. (Compare this to the FBI's bungled raid at Ruby Ridge.) Although there have been sporadic efforts to revive the glory days of Butler’s empire (e.g., Hammerfest 2012, a skinhead metal concert), none have been successful. Even the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which could find traces of Nazism in the high Gobi, admits that “the number of active hate groups in the Northwest [has] dropped dramatically.”

Yet more evidence of Idaho’s essential tolerance can be found in the establishment of a Human Rights Education Institute in Coeur d’Alene, which for a time was run by the well-known civil-rights activist… Rachel Dolezal.

This is to leave unremarked the fact that elder Dolezals adopted four orphaned black children, which demonstrates that their attitudes are at polar variance to those of the neo-Nazis.

Clearly, the people of Idaho are being done an injustice. Professor Dawkins and her confreres need to apologize. The reign of the Aryan Nations is long over. A reassessment of Idaho’s role is long overdue.

>>>As columnist George Will has written: The broken correlation of improvements in employment and decreased welfare dependency was not just bewildering, it was frightening. Policymakers had long held a serene faith in social salvation through better economic incentives and fewer barriers to individual initiative. The possibility that the decisive factors are not economic but cultural — habits, mores, customs — was dismaying because it is easier for government to alter incentives and remove barriers than to alter culture. We cannot ignore culture. “The poverty rate among black married couples has been in single digits every year since 1994,” the economist Thomas Sowell has noted. “Behavior matters and facts matter, more than the prevailing social visions or political empires built on those visions.”<<<

(((What a radical idea: behavior matters, culture matters. I ask myself why my Hindu Niece has done so magnificently well, without ever having really her own pot to piss in....she lives in a one room micro-apartment at this time, and rides a bike to work at the Max Planck Institute of Brain Research - but tells me "I'm on top of the world now, Uncle Bob" and has been giddy happy like a skipping little girl these recent days:) )))

Most Americans Expect a Long, Hot Summer of Racial Unrest

. Moynihan Would Not Be Surprised.

fullscreen Protesters march in Baltimore in April.

It’s hard to get 96 percent of people to agree on anything, but last month’s Wall Street Journal/NBC poll found that 96 percent of those surveyed believe we are in for a summer of racial unrest. In the wake of Ferguson and Baltimore, it’s time for some reflection on how we got here. This year marks two significant anniversaries. In August 1965, the Watts riots broke out in Los Angeles, leading to 34 deaths and $300 million in property damage. Coming after the passage of well-intentioned Great Society welfare programs, the riots made clear that government spending wasn’t going to solve all the problems of urban America. Indeed, another 50th anniversary we mark this year is that of a seminal work that helped explain why government would be no panacea: Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s “The Negro Family: A Call for National Action.” Published in 1965 and known as “the Moynihan Report,” it burst many bubbles of liberal thinking. RELATED: Poverty, Despair, and Big Government After analyzing reams of relevant social-science research, Moynihan concluded that the decline of the two-parent family was fueling the growth of poverty and unemployment, and leading to rising crime rates in black neighborhoods and schools without discipline.....................

Highlights The new home market is perhaps becoming the economy's leading sector, underscored by the recent jump in new home sales and the surge in starts & permits and now by a major 5-point spike in the housing market index to 59 for June which is well outside Econoday's high-end forecast. This matches last September as the strongest reading of the recovery.

Future sales lead the report with the component jumping 6 points to 69 followed by present sales at 65 for a 7 point gain. Traffic continues to lag but, at 44, is up 5 points in the month. Weakness in traffic reflects lack of first-time buyers in the market though the improvement here is a major plus in the June report.

The South, in both the latest report and in trend, is the strongest growth region for new homes and is also by far the largest region. The West is second in strength followed by the Midwest. The Northeast, which is the smallest new home region, remains in contraction.

Rising interest rates don't seem to be slowing the new home market which is getting a boost from strength in the jobs market. Housing starts & permits absolutely surged in April with the May report to be posted tomorrow morning.

Bernie should be running for Prime Minister of Greece, not the President of the USofA.

"Creditor looting" is an excellent new phrase, and would run smoothly off Bernie's old tongue.

"Creditor looting" - heh

:)

Means they've finally had it and really want their money back, or at least some of it.

This phrase was suggested to the Greeks by Quirk Advertising Agency LLC, out of Detroit, Michigan, where it was originally used by the Democratic Party in a 'name-blame' effort against the one or two Republicans there.

Quirk is an open market kind of guy and will work for absolutely anybody.

I have no doubt we can expect the same from Hillary as we got from Obama, 'the most ethical and transparent administration in history'.

She officially launched her campaign on Roosevelt Island, and obscure NY island with limited access. Although Roosevelt is a public island used by families for picnics and a get-a-way location, Clinton security and the Secret Service restricted access there to Clinton supporters. A family of four who didn't know about the event and were there for a day out where asked by security if they were Clinton supporters and when they replied they weren't they were told to go around.

She offered a populist formulation of the issues but avoided such controversial issues as trade, the Patriot Act, or the XL pipeline. Her discussion on 'equality' stole a page from Sanders and Warren but given some of her recent statements and background they sounded a little gratuitous and hypocritical, not a good thing given the fact that according to polls the majority of Americans don't trust her.

In another speech in NH the same security group and secret service detail denied access to her speech to the designated pool reporter from the Daily Mail.

Hillary Clinton campaign denies access to DailyMail.com political editor as Monday's pool reporter in New Hampshire

The Clinton campaign booted out David Martosko of DailyMail.com this morning

He was the designated print pool reporter for the day

The pool was formed at the request of the Clinton campaign, with one reporter traveling with the presidential hopeful each day

The campaign is not supposed to have a say in which reporter travels - with the correspondents deciding the rotation

FRONT PAGE CONTRIBUTORDemocratic Party Now Literally Selling HateThe Party of Anger and Resentment

By: Dan McLaughlin (Diary) | June 14th, 2015 at 08:40 PM | 20

Democrats.org, the Democratic Party’s official website and email domain, sent the following email today suggesting Father’s Day gifts for your Democrat dad (assuming of course that you would do anything as gender-exclusive as celebrate Father’s Day):

hate tea parties email

Here’s a description of that lovely item, which you can own for only $30:

hate tea tumbler

That’s right: it’s a coffee travel mug that advertises your seething hatred of the Tea Party faction. Nothing says Father’s Day like Dad ranting against people he hates, eh? And mind you, the Democrats aren’t just quietly selling this in some obscure corner nobody noticed – someone thought this would sell well enough as a gift to blast it to the party’s entire mailing list.

Now, politics ain’t beanbag. I’m sure you can find “I hate hippies” merchandise somewhere in this land. GOPstore.com, which seems to be unaffiliated source of GOP merchandise, sells this button:

annoy a liberal

But that’s pretty mild. I did a search of the official GOP store and got no sign that Republicans are selling any official branded party merchandise that advertises hate of any people or groups:

noh8

It turns out that, unsurprisingly, the sort of adults who run the institutional Republican Party, whatever their other faults, are not selling merchandise that literally advertises who you hate. Maybe that’s maturity, maybe that’s some good sense of what Republicans would be embarrassed to buy and display to their friends, but there you have it.

When we talk about the Democratic Party’s descent into a party driven primarily by its cultural resentments of fellow Americans, this sort of thing – trivial in itself though it is – speaks volumes. The Democrats have exhausted their party’s interest in economic or foreign policy; they will be running a presidential candidate in 2016 who has been in Washington for a quarter of a century with no tangible accomplishments. So she will do what small, unaccomplished people have always done: rally the tribe against people they hate. All that and $30 will buy you a mug of coffee.

May 28, 2015 ... Bernie Sanders once penned an essay claiming that men fantasize about abusing women and women fantasize about being raped. It's not ...Bernie Sanders 1972: Men fantasize about abusing ...http://hotair.com/archives/2015/05/28/bernie-sanders-1972-men-fantasize-about-abusing-women-women-fantasize-about-being-raped/Cached

May 28, 2015 ... In fact, follow the first link up top and you'll see that his deep thoughts on rape were part of a piece about women being conditioned to crave ...Bernie Sanders Once Wrote That Women Fantasize...http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/05/28/bernie-sanders-once-wrote-that-women-fantasize-about-being-gang-raped/Cached

May 28, 2015 ... U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders penned an essay in 1972 claiming that women fantasize about being gang raped and men fantasize about ...Sanders: Women ' fantasize about being raped by 3...http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/may/29/sanders-women-fantasize-about-being-raped-3-men-si/Cached

May 29, 2015 ... Bernie Sanders, running for the Democratic presidential nomination, wrote an ... he said women fantasize "about being raped by 3 men simultaneously." ... For Not Knowing This New RuleProvide-Savings Insurance Quotes.Does Bernie Sanders beleive that women fantasize...http://www.debate.org/opinions/does-bernie-sanders-beleive-that-women-fantasize-about-being-rapedCached

May 30, 2015 ... Bernie sander views men as wanting to rape and women as wanting to be raped. He's a quote from/about Bernie Sander: “A man goes home ...Bernie Sanders Wrote That Women Fantasize About...http://rightwingnews.com/democrats/bernie-sanders-wrote-that-women-fantasize-about-being-gang-raped/Cached

May 28, 2015 ... Bernie Sanders' Essay: Women 'Fantasize About Being Raped' .... To quote the Bard of Hibbing: “If my thought dreams could be seen/they'd ...Bernie Sanders wrote an essay saying that women...http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3295045/postsCached

May 29, 2015 ... Bernie Sanders' progressive presidential challenge to Hillary Clinton is gaining steam, an ... his has surfaced in which he says women fantasize “being raped by 3 men simultaneously. .... A semi-relevant P. J. O'Rourke quote:.

Saudi Arabia carries out its 100th beheading this year, with a murderer and drug smuggler the latest to die under its strict regime

Syrian Ismael al-Tawm 'smuggled amphetamine pills' into the kingdom Rami al-Khaldi was convicted of stabbing another Saudi to death in Taef Number of executions has surged in 2015 compared with 87 all of last year Human rights activists are unable to explain specific reasons for the rise

One has to remember that Bernie Sanders comments about people, men and women, fantasizing about rape came back in the early 70's, a great time for hedonists. Best time of my life. However, times change and so do people and society.

As for Sanders actual comment, I suspect there are a lot more people who indulge in these fantasies than society at large is willing to admit. I suspect the opposite of his statements is equally true, men's of being gang raped by a bunch of women, women's of tying up a man and raping him. But lordy, they are only fantasies. This is not the dark ages and only the sick or criminal would consider acting on those fantasies (except maybe the being tied up maybe :0)

Since the comment was so long ago, I don't hold the article against Sanders.

What I do hold against him was his attempts at distancing himself from the comments,

Michael Briggs, his campaign spokesman, said Sanders’ essay was a “dumb attempt at dark satire in an alternative publication” that “in no way reflects his views or record on women.” He added, “It was intended to attack gender stereotypes of the ’70s, but it looks as stupid today as it was then.

He has an pro-feminist voting record on issues that are specifically important to a large number of women. He seems to care about women’s equality and a woman’s right to make her own choices. While I might disagree with some of his views, I wouldn't call him anti-woman.

As I said, some people evolve. Others don't. Sanders is in his seventy's. His initial comments came back when he was around 30, over 40 years ago. On the other hand, you have candidates like Ben Carson who is in his sixties that said this year that going to prison turns you gay.

Yes, Ash, I do find moments of high humor in the continuing "Rachel Saga", even if you are a dire dour humorless dolt.

I am also beginning to feel some admiration for this confused your girl as well.

Revealed: Rachel Dolezal sued Howard University for … discriminating against her because she’s whiteposted at 4:41 pm on June 15, 2015 by Allahpundit

This was in 2002, before the “transition.”

According to a Court of Appeals opinion, Dolezal’s lawsuit “claimed discrimination based on race, pregnancy, family responsibilities and gender.” She alleged that Smith and other school officials improperly blocked her appointment to a teaching assistant post, rejected her application for a post-graduate instructorship, and denied her scholarship aid while she was a student.

The court opinion also noted that Dolezal claimed that the university’s decision to remove some of her artworks from a February 2001 student exhibition was “motivated by a discriminatory purpose to favor African-American students over” her.

As detailed in the court opinion, Dolezal’s lawsuit contended that Howard was “permeated with discriminatory intimidation, ridicule, and insult.”

She lost the suit but Dolezal’s issues with Howard were well known to her family. Her history with the school is fascinating, in fact, and may be a window onto why she began to try to pass as black in the first place. She got a full scholarship to Howard for her art, which specialized in portraits of African-Americans. The school, her father claims, “took her for a black woman” because of her subject matter although she presented herself as white at the time and wouldn’t begin to change her appearance until years later.

Turns out things weren’t always easy for a white student on campus:

[Rachel’s brother] Ezra believes the only reason his sister would change her identity was due to the racism she claimed to have encountered at Howard University, where she graduated with her master’s degree in fine art in 2002.

Rachel, he added, would often complain that she was treated poorly as one of only a few white students on a mostly black campus.

“She used to tell us that teachers treated her differently than other people and a lot of them acted like they didn’t want her there,” Ezra said. “Because of her work in African-American art, they thought she was a black student during her application, but they ended up with a white person.”

He said that the experience made her angry, and it was then that Rachel started being “hateful to white people.”

She ended up “self-hating,” he claims, which, if true, helps explain the psychological pressure to “become” black. A bit more detail courtesy of a former Howard student:

While nobody doubted [Dolezal’s] racial identity [at Howard], the former student told BuzzFeed News that some faculty members were critical of the motivations behind her work. She noted one professor specifically: Tritobia Benjamin, who was well known in the art world as an authority on black female artists.

“Dr. Benjamin was very critical of Rachel,” the former student told BuzzFeed News, because although she was white, she “captured the black body in her paintings,” particularly black men.

So imagine you’re Rachel Dolezal, having grown up with adopted brothers and sisters who are black, having married a black man, having focused your art on African-American subjects, having applied and been accepted to Howard University, and then discovering that you’re still not black enough to be fully accepted in the cultural and academic circles you move in. Part of the reason she changed her appearance doubtless was sincere identification with and admiration for black culture, but partly too it now seems like an act of desperation to assimilate as completely as she wished. She was caught in an authenticity trap, a ludicrous phony when she tried to pass as black and a “problematic” white artist exploiting black subjects when she didn’t.

Via Mediaite, here’s Whoopi Goldberg wondering why, if a man can sincerely feel like he’s a woman, Rachel Dolezal can’t sincerely feel like she’s black, a question conservatives have been asking for the past four days. Note too Whoopi’s joke near the end about how she’s fine with Dolezal’s new identity so long as she’s prepared for “everything that comes with that.” I asked that question this morning. What if Dolezal is prepared for it? What if she prefers to live as a black woman even if that means experiencing prejudice? If race is a social construct and the touchstone of that construct in America is oppression, why shouldn’t a white woman who’s willing to endure it because of her appearance, with no intention of changing that appearance, be treated as authentic?

Magnificent Ronald and the Founding Fathers of al Qaeda

“These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America’s founding fathers.” — Ronald Reagan while introducing the Mujahideen leaders to media on the White house lawns (1985). During Reagan’s 8 years in power, the CIA secretly sent billions of dollars of military aid to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in a US-supported jihad against the Soviet Union. We repeated the insanity with ISIS against Syria.